Sunday, July 28, 2013 2:59:52 PMAn American woman, visiting Germany for the first time, sees a German man peeing in a trash bin in a park. "Gross!" she shouts. The man looks up at her, winks, and says, "Danke!"

Sunday, July 28, 2013 10:53:26 AMNot sure the Queen of the Night is going to help IAB'ers see the lighter side of German. =^.^= I kid. It's a beautiful aria.

I was (jokingly) saying that opera is to blame for German having a reputation as a harsh language, hence my choice of an aria in which a monumentally angry woman is commanding her daughter to stab someone to death:

Saturday, July 27, 2013 9:09:33 PMThat was hysterical - mostly because my grandma's first tongue was German, and I heard a lot of the language as a kid. There's a lot of truth in this bit, too. As a mild oath, Grandma would say *Donnerstag und Freitag!* which, to our ears was a scary and incomprehensible donnashtuckenfry-tah! and not merely German for Thursday and Friday. I should think it ranks very highly in the voting for best swearing language.

Saturday, July 27, 2013 7:44:32 PM@ Angilion: Not sure the Queen of the Night is going to help IAB'ers see the lighter side of German. =^.^= I kid. It's a beautiful aria. I've heard it somewhere before, which is surprising because I almost never listen to opera. Perhaps I should start. I really enjoyed that. Thanks!

I generally prefer a lower pitch and rarely listen to sopranos, but Diana Damrau does a spectacular job of this particularly difficult aria (it was written specifically for one woman with an unusual voice and is damn near impossible to sing well).

Saturday, July 27, 2013 7:14:09 PM@ Angilion: Yes! Thank you. You explained that all perfectly: a dollop of truth exaggerated for comic effect.

I happen to like German a lot and wish I could speak it. I've had three American friends who are fluent, and I've always envied them. (One is a dual citizen, another married a German, and the third is, frankly, a genius who picked up German quickly during his studies and perfected it with travel.)

Anyone wanting to hear the German language sounding beautiful--and not at all like it's made to sound in this comic video--need only listen to the first 30 seconds of this.

Saturday, July 27, 2013 7:00:36 PMOf course it's going to sound angrier than the rest when the "German guy" is the only one shouting the words...Pretty sure that's not how most German people would say them. This video boils down to: "lol omg german words sound different than those from other languages!"

German spoken normally does sound a bit harsher to many people than some languages with different roots, particular European languages with strong roots in Latin. That's the little bit of truth that's greatly exaggerated for comic effect in this video. German also makes more use of compound words, which are often a bit less smooth.

The same has often been said about English, which is partially rooted in Anglisc (aka Old English), which is closely related to German.

Saturday, July 27, 2013 1:51:01 PMOf course it's going to sound angrier than the rest when the "German guy" is the only one shouting the words...Pretty sure that's not how most German people would say them. This video boils down to: "lol omg german words sound different than those from other languages!"